bonded with baby
by signelchan
Summary: Sometimes children inherit the worst of their parents.


"I don't care what you're doing!" Heather was at the literal end of her rope, yelling into her phone to try and be heard over the wailing noise coming from the baby in her lap. "I need you back here right now, and if that means forgetting about eating tonight, then so be it!"

From where he stood in line at the grocery store, Alejandro sighed, trying to ignore the background noise in his phone conversation. "I promise you I will return home as soon as I can, _mi amor_," he said, hoping that she wouldn't be too mad that he wasn't going to simply drop everything and rush back. "I cannot leave quite yet, and I am confident enough in your abilities that you can calm him down before I get there. What seems to be the problem?"

"He wants nothing to do with me! This started the second you left!" The exasperation in Heather's voice made it clear that this was a regular occurrence, one she had no real control over. "I tell you to take your little clone with you, that he'll be so much better if he's there, and you ignore me for this to happen!"

"How was I supposed to know that you wanted to send him with me for a reason beyond acquiring discounts? You really should try to bond with him, rather than pushing him off on me when you get the chance." Instead of allowing for her to make a case in her defense, he hung up the phone and continued on with what he had been doing before interrupted by the call.

That left Heather alone with no support whatsoever in getting the baby to stop with his incessant whining. "Great, just great," she grumbled, throwing her phone across the room where it hit the wall and shattered the screen. "He's so going to pay when he gets here." But her plotting on how to make her boyfriend pay was cut short when the crying, which had already been quite loud, reached new levels. "Ugh! Stupid kid screams whenever I'm around and it's just dumb!" She tried lifting him to calm him down, but all he did was squirm his entire body, from pudgy face to absolutely chubby legs, causing her to once again let him rest in her lap.

The ordeal went on for what seemed like hours, but was really no more than twenty minutes, until Alejandro came in the door, arms laden with bags of things he had been sent to the store for. He set them down, came over to where she sat with screaming child, and picked the baby up—and within seconds the crying had stopped. "I cannot see why you have such a problem with keeping him quiet," he said with a smile, as she got up and began putting away the groceries he had just brought with him. Almost every other word she said at that time was negative, something he couldn't help but comment on. "Please do not act so mad about this, because it is simply one of few traits he inherited from you."

"From me? You think that I used to whine and cry like that? _Puh_-lease. I handled myself with class, even when I was in diapers." She rolled her eyes and went back to putting things away, still muttering things under her breath.

"I never said you acted this way, but I do know that you tend to start crying when you are away from me for too long." She slammed a cabinet door and he grinned, causing the baby to give a gummy smile as well. "You must admit, he is very much like you when it comes to wanting me."

Another door slammed closed, and the sound of angered footsteps followed it, from the kitchen all the way to where Alejandro stood holding the child. There was anger in Heather's eyes, as she pressed a finger right under his chin, pushing his head back very slightly. "Don't you ever say that again. Ever."

"Why, is facing the truth hard for you?"

"It's not the truth! That is nothing but lies and we both know it!" With her other hand, she grabbed one of his wrists, her hand barely touching the child as she did. "I want you because I love you! He wants you because he—"

"Loves me just as much, I do believe. Please unhand me before something happens and we are once again greeted with screaming." She sighed and pulled away from him, and he responded by passing the baby back to her. "Thank you. Now just be gentle with him and you will see that you are capable of keeping him calm just as well as I am."

Less than a minute later, which was spent almost entirely on the two twenty-somethings staring each other down, the baby began screaming again. "So much for keeping him calm," she said with a snappy tone, pushing him back into his father's arms, where he stopped crying quicker than he had started. "Let's face it, there's something about you that he loves that I don't have."

"I am fairly certain that he has similar feelings for us both." Alejandro leaned down and gently kissed the dark hair on the top of the chubby baby's head. "However, I think he prefers me over you for several reasons, the biggest one being that I am the superior parent to you."

"You are so not. He just loves you more."

"He loves us both equal amounts, Heather. That does not mean he has to want to be with us in those same amounts. You try to please him and fail miserably, while I hold him and give him what he wants when it wants it." He looked at her and smiled, and she rolled her eyes. "Oh, do not act that way! If you were more confident in your abilities, you could be as good of a parent as I am."

Instead of prolonging the argument, which would loop in circles until they got tired of fighting, she decided to pretend to agree with him. "Of course I could be! And maybe _you_ could be the one who carries the next kid for nine months, just for it to hate you!"

"He does not hate you, he simply prefers me over you. I would expect nothing less from a child named after myself." He kissed the baby's head again, this time getting a little noise of contentment in return. "Now if you would stop being negative, maybe he will prefer us both equally."

"I'll stop being negative the day he stops crying whenever you disappear from his view." To say Heather was displeased with the fact that her son preferred his father over her wasn't an exact truth, but she was definitely jealous that Alejandro was able to hold their kid and not be screamed at for it. Her way of letting him know that, though, was not the brightest and ended with her feeling even worse about the situation than she should have. Accusing a baby that was a few months old of loving one parent more than the other was most definitely not the way to handle things.

Eventually she'd get to have cuddle time with the boy and have it willing on both sides. But for that to happen, something known as object permanence—most directly dealing with the continued existence of people when they weren't actively holding the kid—had to come into effect.

**A/N: Oh wow it's been a while since I've done one of these. Basically I've decided to start crossposting things between here, my tumblr, and my AO3, and this was the first thing I decided on. It was written as a request fill and I happened to love it so much that it needed to be seen elsewhere. So if you've read this before, it's the same person posting it, just in a different place.**


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